Bruce Anderson is also particularly upset about the general gentrification of the Booneville area, which is filling up with wineries, microbreweries, bed & breakfasts, etc. As in Berkeley, where I live, many of these folks spout a psuedo-left line which is very good around any question that doesn't affect their own pocketbook, preferably ones a long way away. As Bruce succinctly put it once, "think globally, sell out locally."
Gary Ramos is part of a rather odd clique in the Peace & Freedom Party, but it's not a foreign invasion -- purely homegrown. I expect he'll do pretty well as our candidate in November if he doens't take to much advice from some of his friends.
There are two things about the PFP primary which might be interesting to other people on the list as well.
First, in every contested race where there was a candidate with a Hispanic surname (La Riva, Gomez, Ramos), that candidate won. This is a continuation of a long-time pattern.
Second, in several races there were not only more votes cast than the number of P&F registrants who went to the polls, there were more votes than the total number of party registrants. This means that the goal of the blanket primary proponents -- destroying party cohesiveness and identity -- has been successful at least in the case of the smaller parties. In this particular election, I don't think results would have been enormously different than in a normal primary, but it shows what someone with a little money and organization could do to a small party under the new system. (Since the proponents of the blanket primary are generally hostile to the existence of any politics other than what they consider "normal" -- to use Steve Peace's term --, this of course doesn't matter to them.)
Tom Condit